Maestro My Astonishment

I'm not sure what made me think it would be a good idea to put Tyler in piano lessons. I guess I just felt like he needed something more than lawn mowers and dinosaurs to ensure he had some sort of chance at a well-rounded personality. By the time he was in second grade, I was terrified that his career goals would never expand beyond becoming a Tyrannosaurus Rex landscaper. While I would have wholeheartedly supported his dream, I would have had a terrible time advising him on just how to go about marketing his business. And, let's face it, he would probably end up living as a recluse in my basement, rolling little metal lawn mowers over the threadbare carpet and practicing his claw-swiping moves on his sister's old dolls. This image is what propelled me to contact a woman who lived down the street from us. Her name was Linda, and she taught piano using the Suzuki Method - a Japanese method of musical training that, thankfully, allowed students to play actual songs from the first day of lessons. I explained to Linda that my son was not a typical child, and I was not sure if he had a musical bone in his body, nor was I certain he would be able to sit on a piano bench for longer than five minutes. She assured me that she worked with kids with attentional difficulties all the time, and that she would love the opportunity to teach my son. She assigned him a 4:00 pm time slot on Tuesdays, and I was required to attend every lesson, and take a lot of notes. I wondered if my doctor would prescribe me some Valium to prepare me for the inevitable chase around the room I was certain would transpire as soon as my kid realized he was going to have to not only sit still for thirty minutes, but actually listen to someone tell him what to do as well. I figured I could pack an extra pill for the poor, unsuspecting piano teacher as well. After all, despite my warning, I really didn't feel I had properly prepared her for the hellstorm I was about to bring into her living room.

We arrived for his first lesson. As expected, he was in tears, me in a state of regret, although un-medicated. Linda, however, was cheerful and expectant. She invited him to sit on the bench and touch the keys on her beautiful grand piano. His curiosity beat out his fear, and he took his place on the piano bench and cautiously began to press the keys. I had a piano at home, which I played now and then, but he had never taken much interest in it. Linda's piano, however, was huge, and resonated with a rich timbre that made his little body tremble with excitement as he pressed the keys - first the deep, baritone keys at the low end of the keyboard, then the terse, high-strung tones of the highest end of the keyboard. He delighted in each note, cocking his head to one side to listen to the nuances of the various notes as he carefully pressed each key, one at a time. She allowed him to become acquainted with the instrument for five or six minutes before sitting beside him and teaching him a sweet little song called "Honeybee". He watched her play it through once, with her right hand only, and easily duplicated the notes. She smiled and nodded, and they played it again. Then he played it alone. She then played it once more, using both hands, and announced it was time for the lesson to end. She turned to me and gave me his practice assignments for the following week. I jotted them down in the notebook I brought with me, thanked her, and managed to drag my reluctant child off her piano bench and out to the car to go home. I couldn't believe I survived it, and, more incredibly, I couldn't believe my son had actually sat still for the entire lesson! It was a miracle. I suddenly wished it was Christmastime, so my dream of a Christmas Miracle of my own would actually have come true. I decided to take it as a Christmas Miracle come early.

He was a good student, and it took no effort on my part to get him to practice. He enjoyed listening to the CD Linda had given him to listen to each night at bedtime. The day after his first lesson, I heard him practicing "Honeybee", only it sounded richer and fuller than it had when he played it at Linda's. I peeked over at him, and saw he was playing with both his right and his left hand, the left playing harmony. I smiled. It was a simple song, and I didn't think it  in any way special that he could play it. After all, hadn't be been listening to it on the CD all afternoon? And hadn't he practiced it several times during his first lesson with Linda? I left him to his practicing, and finished making dinner.

The following Tuesday, we arrived for his lesson promptly at 4:00. She asked how practice had gone for the week, and my son piped up that he had practiced every day as he pulled out the bench and took his seat at her piano. She asked him to play his scales and he did. Then she asked him to play "Honeybee', which he did. She turned to me and asked me when he started using both hands to play the song, and I told her the day after his first lesson, and asked her why she was asking. She looked puzzled, and said quietly that most kids don't catch on so quickly to using both hands, they usually start with the right hand, and don't add the left hand  for awhile.

My son went on to confound her repeatedly over time. By the end of his first month, he was playing Beethoven's "Fur Elise" in full, and adding his own embellishments to it. He had found his groove, his mojo, his passion, his fury, and his talent. He started talking about wanting to be a composer when he grew up. I started to breathe a sigh of relief that, while he may still end up in my basement, he would at least be playing beautiful music for me while he was down there. I could handle that better than lawn mower sounds and beheaded dolls. He became hungry to learn more classical pieces, but Linda kept him on a firm leash, reminding him that he had to learn the basics before he could learn the really hard stuff. He had not yet learned to read a single note, but played solely by watching others play and then mimicking their finger movements. He seemed to have an incredible memory, as he could remember the most intricate chords and cross-over hand placement, and even pick a piece up right in the middle, whereas I would have had to start over if I messed up halfway through. He played for hours a day, and, for the first time since he was a toddler, he smiled often.

After 4 years, Linda announced she had taken him as far as she could, as he had exceeded her ability to teach him any further. She recommended a sought-after piano instructor who owned a performing arts school in St. Cloud. I contacted him, and he invited my son to come for an "audition" of sorts, which basically meant he wanted to see my son play before he decided if he was worth taking on as a student or not. I brought my son up to the teacher's home, and my son fretted the entire time: "What if he thinks I'm awful? What if I mess up? What if I can't remember the notes? I know I'm going to screw up!". Self-confidence has never been one of his strong suits. I assured him that the teacher wasn't going to judge him, but was only going to determine if he should study with a different teacher for awhile, or if he was ready for the challenge of studying under him directly. This did nothing to calm his nerves. We arrived at the home of the maestro, who was a man of short stature but huge personality. He had mountains of thick, white hair crowning his leprechaun face. His name was Dr. Wirth, and, as his name implies, he was a professional pianist. He took a few students each year to work with privately in his home. Dr. Wirth was a consummate professional, with a music studio in his basement that was designed to allow parents to lounge on comfortable couches, read a variety of books (related to music, of course), and listen to their children's lesson. Most of his private students were older teenagers, kids who had decided to make music a central theme on their future goals, and some came from other states to study with him, one from as far away as Nebraska, a full day's drive away. One student we met drove down from Duluth, nearly four hours away, every week for his lesson. If Dr. Wirth chose to study with my son, it would be an incredible opportunity for my son to truly master his amazing gift. Dr. Wirth cheerfully ushered us into the house and down the stairs to his studio. He had two grand pianos sitting side by side at one end of the studio, piles of sheet music teetering on each of them. The lounge area was at the other end of the room, separated from the pianos by a low bookshelf and a row of chairs that sat directly behind the student and teacher. I sat in one of those chairs as my son took a seat on the bench of the "student piano", a well-worn black piano, the brand of which I can no longer remember. Dr. Wirth sat on the bench at his own piano (which I called "The Teacher Piano"), and started an easy conversation with my son, asking him questions about music and what he liked to listen to and how he had learned to play. My son answered him in his halting, small voice, looking at me for reassurance as he answered each question. Then Dr. Wirth asked him to play something for him. My son turned to the keyboard, and started making excuses for mistakes he had not made, since he had yet to play a single note. Dr. Wirth laughed and told him to relax and just play like he was at home playing his own piano. And play he did. He played Beethoven's Fur Elise, long a favorite piece of his, and Dr. Wirth simply sat and watched him, the ever-present smile playing at the corners of his mouth, his bright blue eyes twinkling. When my son was done playing, he turned to me, and I gave him a grin that I hoped would tell him he played great. But when he turned to Dr. Wirth, I saw his demeanor shrink, fearful of what the teacher might say. The words that came were kind, and encouraging. He indicated that he had heard enough, and ushered us out of the studio. As we arrived at the top of the stairs, Dr. Wirth stated that he would like to have my son as his student, but that before he would take him, he had to have the proper instrument. The proper instrument, he informed me a moment later, was a grand piano.

My mother arrived for a visit a few weeks later, and we all loaded up in the car on a rainy Saturday and headed to the Twin Cities to go piano shopping. We found ourselves at a small piano store in the heart of the cities, and my son played every one, choosing which piano he would like. He chose one and I walked over to have a look. At $26,000, I closed the lid and told him to head to the bargain bin section of the store. After several hours of banging around on dozens of keyboards, ooh'ing and aaah'ing over a pearl inlaid, Liberace-style grand piano and laughing at the tiny petite baby grands that were sprinkled here and there along the aisles. The weather was miserable, lightening crackled the air through the plate-glass windows overlooking the parking lot and thunder exploded in angry bursts overhead. The rain poured down in solid sheets, and we were in no hurry to leave the comfort of the piano store. Eventually, we settled on a beautiful petite baby grand, one of the ones we had laughed at earlier, that gave the sonorous tones of a much larger instrument, but would actually fit in our living room. A few signatures later, and we wandered out into the dripping, chartreuse world beyond the piano store. The rain had stopped, and the world had gone from being enshrouded in the concrete gray of the storm-swollen clouds to the eye-popping greens and yellows that always seem to follow summer storms. We headed off to the zoo, since the piano wouldn't be delivered for a few days, and the weather had taken a turn to warm, sunny, and downright pleasant. Tyler, however, had taken a turn to downright flipping obnoxious. I've never known a kid who could conjure a stomachache as fast as he can. Anytime we did something he didn't want to do (i.e. take his grandmother, who was visiting for the first time in two years from two thousand miles away, to the zoo and out to dinner), he would double over and claim he had a terrible stomachache. He had no stomachache while we wandered around the piano store for two hours. He had no stomachache during the ninety mile journey to the piano store. He had no stomachache while he loaded up with Cookie Crisp cereal before we left the house that morning, but a trip to the zoo was not on his itinerary, so he was going to make sure it wasn't on anyone else's either.

Toddlers are easy. When they decide to act like gits, you strap them in the stroller, tell them you hear their plaintive wails, but that they are going to do what you tell them to do because you said so, and that was just how it was going to be. But when they hit twelve, and are as tall as you are, you can't exactly strap them into a stroller anymore (although the thought to try did strike me more than once). He moaned and groaned in ways that would make any Hollywood producer proud, doubled over and threatened to poop his pants every ten steps, and when we arrived at the public restroom near the entrance to the zoo, he suddenly decided he didn't have to go anymore, but his stomach was still killing him. I told him that if his stomach didn't, his mother might, and that he'd better straighten up and act right so his grandmother could enjoy the day with us. He expressed his opinion of my remark by emitting a groan that would have made people who were actually dying feel inferior. I smiled and kept walking, while he trudged along behind, clutching his guts as if he were trying to contain his intestines. We finally managed to get inside the zoo, where I had hoped the sight of the giraffes right inside the entrance would perk him up a bit. But he was having none of it. The zoo had not been on our schedule for the day, it was an unplanned side-adventure. This was one-hundred per cent my fault. I knew my son had to have some warning before I sprung anything new on him. We had followed a picture schedule until he was in third grade. But he was nearly thirteen now, and in seventh grade. He was long past picture schedules, and had reached an age where he should have been able to handle schedule changes. That was my opinion on the matter. And, as it turned out, my opinion didn't mean squat.

Being that this is a public blog, it would be unwise for me to post the actual thoughts going through my head as I sat with my still-groaning and complaining child at a picnic table outside the hamburger stand in the middle of the zoo. This would have been alright, considering it was a beautiful day in late May, and the sun felt warm and delightful on my face. The thousands of bees swarming around us, however, were not delightful. They were honeybees, which reminded me of the song, which reminded me of the first visit with Dr. Wirth, which reminded me of the $7,200 I had just plopped down on a piano so he could study with the best teacher in a four-state area, which reminded me that we were here, at this zoo, because of HIM. I thought about the three jobs I was working, and the fact I would have to continue working those three jobs for the next four years to pay for that instrument. I looked over at him, his tiny frame hunched over the table, his shaggy head resting on his crossed arms, his bony elbows pointing east and west like some skeletal version of the Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz. I took a deep breath, and reached over to lay a hand on his skinny shoulder. "Listen," I began, "I know you don't want to be here today. I know you weren't warned that we might be going other places besides the piano store, but grandma wants to see some fun things while she is here, and you have school on Monday. Why don't we make the best of it and enjoy looking at some animals and then we can go home?" He looked up at me without raising his head, and gave me a subtle nod. I grinned and stood up, extending a hand to him. He took it, stood up, then dropped my hand and began trudging along beside me, not happy, but at least not groaning. We caught up with the rest of our group, and enjoyed looking at the animals for the remainder of the afternoon. When we left the zoo, my mother suggested we stop somewhere to eat. Instantaneously, the groaning started in the back seat. I had forgotten to mention that we might stop to eat somewhere on the way home while I was pleading with him at the bee-plagued picnic table. We all groaned then, but stopped at Fuddruckers for burgers. I think the staff there is still laughing at the memory of six people sitting down at a table with plates laden down with burgers, fries and drinks, only to pop back up and walk out without taking a single bite.

Interestingly, his stomachache disappeared the moment we were in the car and headed home. Sometimes, the kid wins.

The piano arrived the following Tuesday while the kids were at school. It required six men to hoist it up the steps. When it was set up, I sat down in the quiet of my empty house, and played a few notes, thinking about the crazy lengths parents will go to ensure their children have every opportunity for success. Even if the child in question doesn't realize what is being sacrificed for him. Like meals out. And free time. And shoes without holes in them. And sanity.

Tyler playing on the new baby grand piano. He hated to be video taped while playing and was so nervous he lost all his confidence. But I video-taped him anyway. I'm glad I did...his dad sold that piano shortly after. 

He quit lessons six months later. My stomach hasn't stopped hurting since.